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Campaign on to switch off Facebook for Earth Hour

Toronto woman wants Facebook to shut down for Earth Hour. One critic's response: &quot;What would I do for that hour?&quot;

Angie Bird with a photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
is trying to get Facebook to shut down for Earth Hour. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

By Kate AllenStaff Reporter

Mon., Feb. 28, 2011

How does a gal go about campaigning to shut down Facebook in support of Earth Hour?

On Facebook, obviously.

Toronto resident Angie Bird, 26, set up a Facebook page to publicize her plea to the site’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg: switch off the 500-million user site and draw unprecedented awareness to the energy conservation initiative.

Bird had this message for Zuckerberg in a YouTube video posted to her page: “Imagine you just changed your Facebook status to ‘Mark Zuckerberg just saved the world, LOL!’ ”

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Earth Hour is an environmental initiative started in 2007 in Australia — where Bird is originally from — aimed at convincing people to power off in support of lowering carbon emissions, the primary cause of climate change. In 2009, 88 countries participated and the CN Tower switched off its lights. Last year, 128 countries signed up.

Bird thinks Facebook could bring unprecedented attention to the cause. “They’re such an important tool in the global community,” she says. “It’s the easiest way to reach people of all different races, religions, and backgrounds.”

Facebook’s press team has not responded — yet — to Bird’s campaign, and didn’t answer requests for comment from the Star. But the World Wildlife Fund, which organizes Earth Hour, has lent Bird support from chapters as distant as Denmark and India. WWF Canada wants to bring her on board as a volunteer, says Caron.

Others are less enthusiastic. Jackie Cohen, editor of the blog allfacebook.com, said advertisers would never allow the site to shut down. “No way are they going to say yes to that. It’s so bad for business,” she said.

Cohen had personal concerns, too. “What would I do for that hour?”

Bird, an advertising art director, does realize the gravity of what she’s asking. According to Facebook’s own statistics, users collectively spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site. In a video accompanying the article naming Zuckerberg 2010 person of the year, Time magazine says 510,404 comments are posted to the site every minute.

“It’ll be character-building,” Bird says to anyone who starts hyperventilating at the thought of being forced offline. “They’ll have amazing things to update their status about, if they get through it.”

Though Bird decided to focus on Facebook because she thought it could reach the largest audience, the site has in the past come under fire for its own emissions. In January of last year, Facebook announced it had broken ground on the location of its first custom data centre, which will house thousands of servers where users’ information is stored.

The company claimed it would use energy-efficient techniques in powering the data centre, but Greenpeace criticized Facebook for using coal to power the centre and not committing to 100 per cent green energy sources. Its page “Unfriend Coal” has more than 56,000 “likes.”

Data on how much carbon emissions are released by using the Internet are difficult to pin down. Google’s own official estimate is that one search emits 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide, though other estimates have put that figure much higher.

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